


Where he goes, I go

by pure1magination



Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers (Comic), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Getting Together, M/M, Missions Gone Wrong, Near Death Experiences, Possessive Behavior, Pre-Movie(s), Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 02:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7783786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pure1magination/pseuds/pure1magination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Cougs?” [coughing, background yelling between several angry men] “Cougs, I fucked up.” [pained noise] “I fucked up. They’re… they’re gonna smash the-” [static]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where he goes, I go

It should have been a simple mission. Below their jurisdiction, in fact. A simple drug bust. The perps had taken hostages as collateral for a belated payment. Through unfortunate coincidence, they took shelter in a warehouse full of explosives. Clay doubted the drug cartel was aware of what the crates contained; they had purposely been mislabeled by the government. The only indication that the crates were dangerous was the ‘Fragile’ stamp slapped diagonally across each one.

Jensen had been sent in as an undercover agent. 

“Don’t worry guys, I’ve got this. You see these glasses? Check it.” He pointed at the computer screen. “Watch that.” Jensen turned his head. “Boring view of the docks… Building, building…  _ Hey   _ there. Lookin’  _ good,  _ Cougs!” Cougar smiled on the computer screen, brought two fingers to the brim of his hat, and saluted. Jensen saluted back.

“All right,” Clay said gruffly, “we get it. Got anything else?”

“Pack of bubblegum, original flavor. It’s got comic strips on it in case I get bored. Some marbles, not sure where they’re from. A big piece of lint. Aaand-”

“Anything  _ useful?”  _ Roque interrupted before Jensen could continue listing the items in his pockets.

“Well. I’ve got my walkie.” Jensen patted the walkie-talkie at his waist. A loud THUNK-THUNK assaulted their ears, accompanied by crackles of static. The team winced.

“So we’ve got audio and visual,” Clay summed. “You armed?”

Jensen produced a taser from his pocket. “Locked and loaded.”

“Then we’re ready to go. Pooch?”

Pooch started the van.

*

Jensen adjusted his faded black-and-gray hoodie restlessly. He rolled his neck back and forth, shook out his hands. He blew out a breath between pursed lips, letting his cheeks puff out. He raised his hand. He rapped on the door to the warehouse.

People shuffled about inside. 

Jensen surreptitiously turned on the walkie at his waist. “Audio engaged.” 

He kept his hands in his pockets as the men inside argued amongst each other. One of them was sent to answer the door.

Jensen flipped a switch. “One-way switch activated. Not that I don’t enjoy your lovely voices. It would just be really awkward if one of you started talking about your love li-- Hi.” 

In the darkened van, Clay, Roque, and Cougar bent close over the computer screen, watching as the man answered the door and squinted suspiciously at Jensen, asked what he was doing here.

“Oh, you know,” Jensen hedged, going for casual, “taking a stroll. Appreciating the view. Hey, would you have any idea where to get some crack around here?”

The man narrowed his eyes into slits. “Are you a cop?”

Jensen pfff’d. “Do I  _ look  _ like a cop? -Nah, man. Cops  _ suck.  _ Always beating people up and stuff.” he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Always hated cops. Just the  _ sound  _ of sirens makes me nervous, you know? Even if I didn’t do anything. It’s like, ‘they’re after me!’” Jensen fake-laughed.

The guy seemed to buy it. He peered behind Jensen, still not entirely trusting. “You looking to buy?”

“Hell  _ yeah,  _ man! I’ve gotta get my fix. Got the jitters. Been too long.” Jensen rocked back and forth some more, bounced a little. The image on the computer screen jiggled up and down, blurring out of focus.

The guy took the bait. He led Jensen into the warehouse.

Cougar typed something into the computer. Stats appeared all over the screen, including x-rays of all the crates in the warehouse. 

Jensen maintained his casual facade, looking around on the pretense of restlessness. He kept chattering about how great it felt to be on drugs, and he was so convincing, the rest of the team began to wonder if Jensen had ever experimented with illegal drugs in his youth. 

Clay cast a probing glance at Cougar.

Cougar’s face was an unreadable mask, his gaze intensely focused on the computer screen.

The guys dealt him the drugs. Jensen executed the planned maneuver. He whipped out the taser and got three of them with surprisingly quick reflexes. 

But something went wrong.

Jensen spun around. The view on the screen blurred and settled, disorienting. A dozen men were running at Jensen from different angles. Three hostages were bound and gagged on a stack of crates. One of them was crying. “Guys, I can’t-” Jensen backed away, taser held aloft. “There’s too many of them, I can’t-!”

He ducked and dodged, lashed out with the taser, took out four more of them, but he got knocked over the back of his head and fell to the ground. The taser tumbled out of his hand, bouncing across the floor. One of them picked it up and went to use it on Jensen. He jolted in pain. 

The men were shouting in a foreign language.

They kicked him, over and over.

Jensen curled in on himself in pain.

His glasses were smacked off his face; they flew across the room. One of the lenses fuzzed out. Their view of the room was lopsided.

“Cougs,” Jensen croaked into the walkie. “Cougs, I fucked up.” He coughed. 

Cougar’s nose was nearly pressed to the computer screen. All of his muscles were tense.

“There’s too many of them,” Jensen said. “Cougs! They’re gonna smash the-!”

Jensen’s voice was cut off in a loud crackle of static.

Clay stood, his face smoothing into a cold, stony look.

“Should we go in there?” Roque asked.

“Wait,” Clay said.

“He needs backup!” Cougar growled.

“We can’t go in until we’re sure,” Clay said.

Cougar smashed his fists on either side of the keyboard. He stood to face Clay. “We can't leave him there to die!”

“Might not die,” Clay said coldly. “Might escape with a beating.”

Cougar grabbed his sniper rifle.

“You take one step out that door,” Clay snapped, “and you’re off the team.”

Cougar paused.

“Jensen knew the risks when he went on the mission. He knew the risks when he joined the goddamned military. If you can’t handle it, maybe it’s time you quit, or reevaluated your life choices.”

Cougar lowered his weapon. He glared silently at the door.

Behind him, the glasses were kicked once more. They struck the side of a crate and settled onto the floor at a less awkward angle. The group of men slowed their kicking. Slowly, the group dissipated. Jensen’s body remained in a ball on the ground. Blood trickled from the corner of his slackened mouth.

Cougar turned slowly. “He should not have gone in alone.”

*

Jensen knew when he was beaten. He may be a fantastic athlete. He may be absolutely fantastic in every way at a lot of things. And one of these things was knowing when to give up. So Jensen played dead.

Eventually, they got tired of kicking him and walked away.

On the plus side, he was no longer getting the shit kicked out of him.

On the down side, everything hurt, he had at least two dozen bruises forming  _ everywhere,  _ all communication with his team had been cut off, and he was effectively blind. He could see several blurry shapes moving about, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Naturally, they were speaking one of the languages that Jensen  _ didn’t  _ speak.

It was a little-known fact that Jensen was somewhat of an expert in linguistics. The only two people who knew were Cougs and Stephanie, but mostly Cougs. Stephanie knew that he’d studied three languages in high school and loved word-of-the-day type stuff, but Cougar was the one who’d been taken by surprise when they’d first met and Jensen had launched into expert Spanish. He’d been taken by surprise again when they were on a mission in Iraq and Jensen launched casually into expert Arabic.

In fact, Jensen was fluent in seventeen languages and counting. 

But there were  _ way  _ more than seventeen languages in the world, and sadly, Jensen did not know the language spoken by his captors. It sounded vaguely familiar, probably an eastern Asian dialect, but it was almost impossible to parse out any words without the benefit of seeing what they were gesturing to, or who. 

Jensen formed a plan. It wasn’t a great plan, but then, he didn’t have very much to work with. He pretty much had to rely on his gut here.

He waited for several hours, keeping up his ‘dead’ schtick. One guy approached him after about twenty minutes, nudged him with his toe, and said something to one of the other guys in that language Jensen didn’t understand. 

The other guy approached. They both stood over him. The other guy said something dismissive. One of them held something under Jensen’s nose. Jensen kept his breathing as subtle as possible. The guy’s fingers smelled like sweat, oil, and something suspicious which Jensen couldn’t put his finger on, but which he definitely did not trust. The dude straightened up, said something kind of angry and dismissive, and walked away. The other dude walked away, too.

They came back shortly and bound Jensen’s ankles and wrists.

Jensen kept playing dead.

*

“Look,” Pooch said, “All I’m saying is, he’s been in there for three hours now. We need to face the possibility that he has been either killed or captured.”

“Not killed,” Cougar said.

Pooch sighed. “We hope not. But we can’t rule out the possibility.”

“We try again,” Cougar said.

“We’re not sending somebody else in there,” Clay said.

“They have explosives,” Roque said. “And they’re  _ smoking  _ in there. I don’t think these idiots know what they’re sitting on top of.”

“Exactly,” Clay agreed. “They could blow the place up.”

“No,” Cougar said. “We send someone else in.”

“And  _ who  _ exactly do you think is gonna be stupid enough to go in there?” Pooch said.

“I’ll go.”

“No,” Clay said. “Cougar, we need you here.”

Cougar glared at him. “That is what you say about everyone. You." He pointed at Clay. "You." He pointed at Roque. "You." He pointed at Pooch. "But not Jensen. Never Jensen.”

Clay narrowed his eyes. “What are you accusing me of, exactly?”

“You don't care if Jensen dies.”

Deafening silence enveloped the room.  Clay’s jaw set. “He volunteered.”

Cougar glared at him.

“What do you want me to say?” Clay asked in exasperation. “As of now, we are one man down. Do you want me to potentially lose  _ another  _ member of my team?”

“I want you to save him.”

“Jensen can save himself.”

Cougar and Clay glared at each other.

“Uh, guys?” Pooch said, turning the computer monitor. “We’ve got action…”

*

Jensen waited until it was  _ really  _ quiet. All he could hear was one guy shuffling cards, a few people snoring, and someone- probably one of the hostages- sniffling every so often and crying softly.

Jensen slowly opened his eyes. The room was mostly dark, save for a few flashlights aimed at the ceiling. They lit the room like torchlight. 

Jensen reached carefully into his back pocket and took out his bowie knife. They’d been stupid enough not to check his back pockets. He sawed the ropes binding his wrists until they gave way. 

Instead of breaking free right away, Jensen waited. He listened.

The room remained quiet.

A guy coughed, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke towards a flashlight beam. The light on the ceiling rippled.

Jensen slowly sat up. Again, he paused and waited.

Satisfied that no one was paying any attention to him, Jensen sawed the ropes binding his ankles. He quietly set the ropes on the ground, moved into a crouching position, and silently scurried across the room towards the direction where his glasses had been knocked off. He groped blindly along the pitch-dark ground until his fingers found smooth glass.

The motion of a giant infrared finger reaching for the glasses is what prompted Pooch’s attention to the computer monitor once more.

The glasses were lifted into the air, straightened, and once more sat right at home on Jensen’s face. 

Jensen looked around the room, finally able to see. He kept towards the shadows and snuck towards the back of the room. This was a crazy-insane plan, and he knew it, but it would work. It had to work.

“What’s he doing?” Roque asked.

“Heading further into the warehouse,” Clay observed, brow furrowed. 

“Why would he do that?” Pooch asked.

Jensen started prying at the tops of nearby crates.

He tried each one systematically, moving along the main aisle, until one of them moved. The top of the crate easily slid open. Jensen reached inside and took out approximately fifty pounds of crack cocaine.

Pooch let out a low whistle.

Someone shouted {Hey! You there!}

“Don’t shoot!” Jensen said, holding up the bags in one hand and his phone in the other, set to the ‘candle’ app. “Or this whole place is gonna go up in flames.”

Several men gathered around him, pointing their weapons at him.

“Don’t think I’ll do it?” Jensen held the ‘flame’ closer to the bags of cocaine. The men rushed forward.

“I warned you!” Jensen threw the bags. The men ran after them in a panic.

Jensen sprinted towards the hostages and set about freeing them as fast as possible. “Hang on,” he said, quiet and urgent. “I’m gonna get you guys out of here. It’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

The guys shouted angrily. Jensen hurried to saw the last rope. The hostages popped free and headed for the door. Jensen turned to face the angry men. He held out his bowie knife, the bottle opener facing them. “I’m warning you!” he said. “I am a master at the ancient art of jujitsu!”

They rushed him from all angles.

The hostages paused near the door. “Go on!” Jensen urged. “Get out of here!” The guys were on top of him. They punched and kicked Jensen’s already-bruised skin. Breath wheezed out of him. He was pretty sure he had a broken rib.

And there was a bright orange light and a deafening boom. The guy holding Jensen by the collar froze, eyes wide, a wooden stake protruding one foot out of his chest, the tip nearly poking Jensen. 

The first explosion triggered another, and another, and another. The deafening bright-orange booms scattered closer and closer, closer together. Shrapnel exploded in all directions. Everyone ran for the door.

“Shit,” Roque said. “Shit, shit shit!”

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Pooch said, climbing into the driver’s seat.

“No!” Cougar grabbed his arm. “Wait!”

“We don’t have  _ time  _ to wait! That warehouse is exploding  _ now!” _

“JENSEN IS STILL IN THERE!”

“Look, for all we know, it was somebody else wearing those glasses. There’s no guarantee that Jensen is even alive.” Pooch started the van and shifted into drive.

“Jensen is  _ not  _ expendable.” Before any of them could stop him, Cougar unlocked the passenger side door, opened it, and duck-and-rolled out of the moving van.

“Shit!” Clay cursed after him. “COUGAR! Pooch, turn this thing around!”

“He’s doing his own crazy shit! We’ve gotta get out of here!” The orange boom of the explosion was visible outside now, and the nearby ground was catching on fire. Debris was raining down.

In the back of the van, the laptop skidded across the floor and banged against a wall. The view through the glasses dipped sideways and once more, the glasses skittered across the ground. This time, the screen went dark.

*

It was dark.

It was dark, and everything burned. His lungs, his legs, his arms. His chest. He was pretty sure he had several broken bones and possibly some third-degree burns. His clothes were definitely singed. He could smell the burning fabric. It was a miracle he could smell anything through his singed nosehairs. 

Someone was leaning over him and saying something, but Jensen couldn’t hear past the cotton-stuffed ringing in his ears.

Someone beat down on his chest again and again.

That just figured. Always gotta beat him while he’s down. 

The beating at his chest stopped and then someone was kissing him.

Jensen barely had time to register his surprise before that someone with the tickly beard-and-mustache blew air into his mouth, and Jensen got it. Someone was giving him CPR. 

He tried to inhale in order to tell them that he was fine, but the second he tried to inhale, he coughed. Coughing hurt his chest. It felt like he was getting beat up all over again. He rolled to his side in pain, and found himself curled around a pair of skinny jeans, which covered some very lean-and-muscular legs. Jensen turned his cheek against this stranger’s knee. He squinted up, trying to see through the smoky darkness. “Cougar?” he croaked.

“Jensen,” Cougar replied thickly. He gathered Jensen into a hug.

Impossibly, this man sounded and smelled like Cougar. Jensen settled into the hug. “How did you get here?” he rasped. His vocal cords felt fried. Crispy. Covered in charcoal. He coughed. “-Remind me to never take up smoking.”

Cougar held him while he coughed. “Came back for you,” he said simply.

Jensen loved the simple way he talked. Straight to the point, Cougar was. Sometimes he didn’t even have to say a thing.

“I could’ve handled it myself,” Jensen rasped, coughing between words.

“No.” Cougar held him tighter.

Jensen’s coughing subsided. “You don’t believe me?” He winced. He tasted blood. His throat might be bleeding. Or maybe his mouth…

“No.”

“Aw, come on. You saw me in there. I was bad  _ ass.” _

“No.”

“What?!” Jensen coughed again. “What do you mean, ‘no’!? That was  _ awesome!”  _ Jensen coughed. “I was  _ awesome.” _

“No.”

“Cougs. I am depressed by your lack of faith in me.”

“No.”

Jensen frowned. “...Are you stuck?” He squinted up to look at Cougar’s face, but all he could see was shadow. “Why do you keep saying ‘no’?”

“You don’t go alone,” Cougar said, voice rough. “Never again.”

“Cougs, are..? Are you  _ crying?” _

Cougar swiped the single tear from his cheek.

“Hey,” Jensen said gently. He reached up to catch Cougar’s hand. “You  _ are  _ crying! Cougs, it’s… it’s nothing to be ashamed of, grown men cry. I cry. Sometimes. Like when Bambi’s mom dies. Or that one part of The Fox and the Hound. Or when… hey. Why are you laughing now? ..Cougs?”

Cougar gathered Jensen into another possessive embrace. “You don’t go alone,” he repeated.

“Okay,” Jensen said, not sure what this was about. “No more solo missions for a while. Did I miss something? Why are you here? Where’s the rest of the team?”

“They left you behind.”

“Oh.” That felt like a duller version of the chest-punch he’d received earlier. He’d had about a dozen of those, actually. And several kicks. “Well. I can’t say I didn’t expect that.”

“You don’t go alone.” Cougar’s voice was very near his ear now. “They don’t leave you behind.”

“Aw, I would’ve caught up.” Jensen wasn’t sure how to cheer him up. And Cougar’s voice was doing some delicious warm shivery things to Jensen’s neck that were raising the hairs on Jensen’s arms.

Cougar shook his head. “You and I. Partners.”

Jensen blushed. “Uh. Well. Yeah. We’re teammates.”

_ “More  _ than teammates,” Cougar insisted. He looked into Jensen’s eyes with intensity that Jensen could feel, despite not being able to see anything besides the glint of reflected light on the surface of Cougar’s eyeballs. And also a little bit of Cougar’s nose and cheekbones, because the smoke was clearing up and the twilight was starting to show through. Cougar really had fabulous cheekbones.

“Friends?” Jensen asked, voice strangled. He adjusted the angle of his body so his neck wasn’t at such a sharp angle. This brought their torsos closer.

Cougar shook his head slightly.  _ “More  _ than friends.”

Jensen blushed again. His heart slammed its foot on the accelerator. “You mean like,  _ best  _ friends?” His eyes darted over Cougar’s shadowy twilit face.

For a terrible gut-suspending moment, he thought Cougar wasn’t going to answer. But then Cougar was leaning closer and his head was tipping to the side and his lips were parting and Jensen could not  _ believe  _ this was happening and then all the sudden Cougar stopped, turned his head, pushed Jensen out of his arms, and Jensen landed on the ground with a thud and a grunt. 

“Cougs?” Jensen asked, bewildered.

A gunshot rang out.

Something fell to the ground.

Jensen raised himself on his elbows. He frowned into the distance, unable to see.

Cougar lowered his right arm, gun in-hand. He put his pistol back in its holster. “Survivor,” he explained. “He tried to kill you.”

“Oh.”

Cougar leaned down and extended his left hand. 

Jensen took it. Cougar pulled him to his feet. Jensen wobbled. He crumpled in on himself. Everything hurt.

Cougar palmed Jensen’s upper arms. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just got the shit kicked out of me, is all. Ran from an explosion. No big. Few dozen bruises.” Jensen slowly uncurled and stood mostly straight upward.

“I will treat those,” Cougar promised.

“You’re the best, Coug.”

Cougar shrugged one shoulder. “So are you.”

“Aw.  _ Thank  _ you, Cougar!”

The walkie at Cougar’s waist crackled. Clay asked for his position.

Cougar answered into the walkie.

Clay announced that they were on their way.

“Guess the explosion scared them off, huh?” Jensen laughed, then coughed. Wow, that hurt.

“Scared me too.”

“Huh.” Jensen squinted a little. “Didn’t think you could  _ get  _ scared, Coug.”

“Scared of losing you.” Cougar’s hand was on his cheek, surprisingly gentle.

“You…” Jensen blinked rapidly. “Heh. I don’t think you could lose me if you  _ tried.” _

“Almost did.” Cougar was gravely serious. 

Jensen swallowed. “Well, thanks to you, I’m still here.” Jensen attempted a smile. 

Cougar hovered close to Jensen’s face again. Jensen couldn’t see his expression past the shadows of his hat. All he could tell was the corners of Cougar’s mouth were turned down. He didn’t seem very happy.

“You don’t seem very happy about that,” Jensen vocalized.

Cougar silently leaned closer.

“...Oh. You’re not mad at  _ me.  _ You’re mad because… oh.”

“You are not expendable,” Cougar said, very close to his face. “You cannot be replaced.”

“Well, sure, I mean, no one is as awesome and certifiably eccentric as I am, but there are plenty of other hackers out there, and-”

Cougar’s thumb halted Jensen’s words by grazing his lower lip. “No.” Cougar tipped his head. “There is only you.” His thumb smoothed to the side, replaced by Cougar’s lips. 

Kissing Cougar was a singular experience. His mouth was gentle, yet firm. His hands knew exactly how to cradle Jensen’s cheek, to anchor his back in place. His chest fit perfectly against Jensen’s. Their hipbones molded together like puzzle pieces.

Jensen’s cheeks warmed. His heart fluttered, actually  _ fluttered,  _ like a swarm of butterflies in the sunlight over a particularly fluffy cloud, and it didn’t matter whether butterflies could actually fly over clouds, because that’s how it  _ felt,  _ and maybe the cloud was made of cotton candy, because Jensen had never felt anything so sweet. He was tingling down to his toes and somehow finding the presence of mind to kiss him back, even though he was still hazy with surprise, and the whole thing felt dreamlike, especially since he’s dreamed about kissing Cougar a million times. He never thought he’d actually get to  _ do  _ it.

Cougar pulled back slowly. He gave Jensen a meaningful look.

“Oh.” Jensen let Cougar support his weight.  _ “That’s  _ what you meant by ‘more than friends.’”

Cougar smirked. That was his silent-laughing smirk. Jensen smiled.

“Into the van, lovebirds!” Clay barked. “This is a restricted area!”

Jensen’s smile dropped. He wondered if Clay had seen.

Cougar wrapped an arm around Jensen’s waist and helped support his weight. He nodded his head towards the van, a silent question whether Jensen could walk.

Jensen answered by letting Cougar help him forward.

*

The next couple of weeks involved a lot of tiger balm, bandages, and Cougar’s skilful hands gliding all over Jensen’s body, which Jensen did not mind one bit. 

It also involved a lot of Cougar glaring at Clay, and Cougar stubbornly staying by Jensen’s side, even refusing to go on missions.

Jensen wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but judging by the glares Clay kept shooting him, it was somehow his fault. 

“Fine,” Clay spat. “Stay behind with your wounded puppy-dog. If you weren’t so good, we’d find ourselves a new sniper.”

“Where I go,” Cougar said very seriously, “he goes.”

Clay rolled his eyes in annoyance. “Pooch! You’re on weapon duty. Let’s go!”

*

Cougar was serious about his declarative statement. After Jensen healed, Cougar insisted on knowing Jensen’s whereabouts for every mission, and if Jensen ever went into the field, Cougar insisted on being his backup.

This had the unexpected side effect of making missions run more smoothly. As it turned out, the two had an almost telepathic chemistry that translated to the battlefield in ways Clay had never noticed before.

“I’m not sure what you two are doing,” he said, catching them both by surprise in an unguarded moment, “but whatever it is, keep doing it.”

Jensen shot Cougar a curious look. Cougar’s arm hovered just above his shoulders, where it had been resting a moment before Clay startled them. His answering look was just as blank and confused as Jensen’s questioning one.

“I don’t care if you’re fucking,” Clay explained gruffly. “Just do it quietly.”

He left a hot-pink blushing Jensen and a Cougar with raised eyebrows. 

“You heard the man,” Jensen deadpanned. “Better quiet down, Cougs. Your constant shouting could raise the dead.”

Cougar snorted, smirked, and leaned in to kiss Jensen again.


End file.
